money – VentureBeathttp://venturebeat.com
News About Tech, Money and InnovationSat, 10 Dec 2016 00:53:13 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.178053529Copyright 2016, VentureBeatVentureBeathttp://vbstatic.co/brand/img/logos/VB_Extended_Logo_40H.pnghttp://venturebeat.com
25040Venturebeat.comAffirm teams with Eventbrite and Expedia to offer monthly payments for events and travelhttp://venturebeat.com/2016/05/17/affirm-teams-with-eventbrite-and-expedia-to-offer-monthly-payments-for-events-and-travel/
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/17/affirm-teams-with-eventbrite-and-expedia-to-offer-monthly-payments-for-events-and-travel/#respondTue, 17 May 2016 15:00:26 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1952921Affirm has expanded into the events and travel market, thanks to partnerships with Eventbrite and Expedia. Under this arrangement, the lending startup will enable monthly payments for consumers who may not be able to instantly pay the full amount. When purchasing a ticket to an event, festival, or conference through Eventbrite, or perhaps reserving a […]
]]>

Affirm has expanded into the events and travel market, thanks to partnerships with Eventbrite and Expedia. Under this arrangement, the lending startup will enable monthly payments for consumers who may not be able to instantly pay the full amount.

When purchasing a ticket to an event, festival, or conference through Eventbrite, or perhaps reserving a hotel, flight, or car reservation through Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity, HomeAway, or Trivago, you’ll have an option to either pay using traditional means, such as a credit card, or using Affirm. With the latter, the cost is broken up into 3 or 6 monthly installments

If you elect to use Affirm, you’ll be able to secure a ticket to the event or book the reservation while you’re still paying the ticket off. This is likely due to the trust the lending startup has placed in you, thanks to its algorithm that assesses someone’s ability to fulfill their financial obligations. At checkout, it’ll ask you for a few pieces of information, such as your name, email address, phone number, birthday, and the last four digits of your Social Security number.

All purchases require that the user is at least 18 years of age, has a valid U.S. phone number registered in their name, and agrees to receive SMS texts from Affirm.

Eventbrite shared that 150 event organizers have already received access to this integration and are currently using it. The events span a variety of categories including endurance, concerts, festivals, and conferences, including Tough Mudder, Okeechobee Music Festival, Moogfest, The Digital Detox, and AFROPUNK.

Monthly payments aren’t exactly a new concept in ecommerce. Competitors in the space include Bill Me Later and Wonga, but Affirm’s algorithm for determining people’s propensity to pay back loans could be its selling point.

“By simply offering Affirm, we are expecting Eventbrite to see the same results as our other 700+ merchant partners, that is a significant increase in conversion, average order value, and revenue,” Levchin said in a statement. “Affirm will give people the ability to attend more events by allowing them to split their ticket purchase into 3 or 6 monthly installments.”

Affirm declined to disclose how it is compensated from each transaction. However, it has said about similar arrangements in the past that it charges simple interest but no late fees.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/17/affirm-teams-with-eventbrite-and-expedia-to-offer-monthly-payments-for-events-and-travel/feed/01952921Affirm teams with Eventbrite and Expedia to offer monthly payments for events and travelPayPal launches PayPal.me to compete with Square’s Cashtagshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/09/01/paypal-launches-instant-payment-service-pay-me-its-cashtags-competitor/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/01/paypal-launches-instant-payment-service-pay-me-its-cashtags-competitor/#respondTue, 01 Sep 2015 10:00:50 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1794365Today PayPal unveiled a new product called PayPal.me that will let users get paid through a customized URL. It works like this: You set up a link through PayPal (mine is PayPal.me/ruth) and then when your friends are looking for a way to send you cash all they have to do is go to your […]
]]>

Today PayPal unveiled a new product called PayPal.me that will let users get paid through a customized URL.

It works like this: You set up a link through PayPal (mine is PayPal.me/ruth) and then when your friends are looking for a way to send you cash all they have to do is go to your PayPal.me page, log into PayPal, and pay you.

The product concept is tied to a study that says people miss out on a lot of cash when their friends forget to pay them back.

“About 50 percent of Americans say they have small debt from friends and family that is owed to them,” says ‎PayPal senior director of global consumer product management, Meron Colbeci. He says PayPal conducted a study revealing that people in the U.S. are owed a massive $51 billion in small peer-to-peer debt. The idea behind PayPal.me is that people will be more likely to pay you back if, when you’re reminding them to pay up, you include a blue link to a place where they can do just that.

The main difference between Cash.me and PayPal.me is that the latter requires users to have a PayPal account, regardless of whether they’re sending or receiving money. If a person sending a payment doesn’t have a PayPal account, the site will redirect them to a page where they can quickly be onboarded to PayPal.

Cashtags, on the other hand, enables those without a Square account to pay friends and businesses by inputting their debit card information.

For instance, while PayPal is launching a product that competes with Cashtags functionality, it is not competing on price. Square offers its Cashtags service to businesses for an incentivizing 1.5 percent transaction fee (less than its typical processing fee of 2.5 percent for Square Register transactions).

The reason PayPal doesn’t need to fuss over keeping prices low is because of the scale of its business. PayPal has 169 million customers in 190 countries. Starting today, users in 18 countries will have access to PayPal.me. Meanwhile, Square Cash, with its Cashtags feature, is only available inside the U.S.

By launching PayPal.me quickly to an international audience, PayPal is actually staying ahead of its competition — especially if Square ever pushes its Cash app to a global audience.

*Update, PayPal’s U.S. fee is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, not 4.4% + $0.30 per transaction as stated earlier.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/01/paypal-launches-instant-payment-service-pay-me-its-cashtags-competitor/feed/01794365PayPal launches PayPal.me to compete with Square’s CashtagsStripe makes it easier for customers to deal with replacement credit cardshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/01/21/stripe-makes-it-easier-for-customers-to-deal-with-replacement-credit-cards/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/21/stripe-makes-it-easier-for-customers-to-deal-with-replacement-credit-cards/#respondWed, 21 Jan 2015 20:28:54 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1646772Stripe's latest update means you don't have to worry about updating all your credit card information every time you get a replacement card.
]]>

Stripe’s latest update means you don’t have to worry about updating your credit card information every time you get a replacement card.

Called “smart saved cards,” the new code automatically updates credit card information, as long as the linked account information stays the same.

Now when merchants save a customer’s payment information, Stripe will still be able to put through transactions continuously even when card information changes. Stripe is working with card networks in order to achieve seamless updates. According to the company’s website:

“There’s no extra work required, and this feature works with most MasterCard, Discover, and Visa cards — without this improvement, over half of the cards stored with Stripe in the last year would expire by 2016.”

The only time this update won’t work is if bank account information changes. Let’s say you close a checking account and open a new one; Stripe will not be able to update your payment information automatically. But for simple card replacements, Stripe’s new service should make losing your credit card less annoying than it usually is — at least when shopping with Stripe’s merchants.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/21/stripe-makes-it-easier-for-customers-to-deal-with-replacement-credit-cards/feed/01646772Stripe makes it easier for customers to deal with replacement credit cardsMoven brings its banking app to Motorola’s Moto 360 and Samsung’s Gear smartwatcheshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/01/02/moven-brings-its-banking-app-to-samsungs-moto360-and-gear-smartwatches/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/02/moven-brings-its-banking-app-to-samsungs-moto360-and-gear-smartwatches/#respondFri, 02 Jan 2015 18:00:20 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1634498EXCLUSIVE: Moven is launching its tech heavy banking app on Motorola’s Moto 360 and Samsung’s Gear smartwatches today to help consumers rein in excessive spending. Moven’s technology has been on the market for less than a year, and in that time the company says it has accrued “tens of thousands of users.” Moven thinks there’s an immense opportunity with wearables to […]
]]>

Moven’s technology has been on the market for less than a year, and in that time the company says it has accrued “tens of thousands of users.” Moven thinks there’s an immense opportunity with wearables to help shape consumer spending behavior. And it’s not the only one. Advertisers and merchants are increasingly taking advantage of mobile and wearable push notifications to lure customers into local stores and get them spending. Moven’s technology works much the same, though instead of alerting you to coupons and sales, it sends you a real-time analysis of your spending habits.

Founder Brett King says Moven is like a health tracker for your finances, which is why it’s ideal for smartwatches. He’s also hopeful that wearables will ultimately function as a payment method using Near Field Communication technology — like Apple Pay on the Apple Watch.

King has spent the last five years waxing poetic about what needs to change in order to move the banking industry and payments processing forward. In addition to hosting a radio program titled Breaking Banks, King has worked on technology surrounding financial services since the early 1990s. The idea for Moven came about during a conversation between King and several venture capitalists over breakfast shortly after the release of his book Bank 2.0. While discussing the future of banking, one of the VCs asked, who would be best suited to tackle the problem — banks or startups?

Realizing that startups would be better positioned to remodel banking constructs, King quickly got to work on his own banking concepts, which led to the birth of Moven — a banking product focused on the daily consumer experience.

Over the last several years, a slew of applications promising to help consumers better handle their finances have emerged, including Simple Bank, Moven, and Mint. Simple and Moven both partner with banks to provide users with FDIC-insured bank accounts that their financial technology sits on top of. For example, Simple bankers can track their spending habits and also input planned expenses. Instead of a bank balance, Simple gives users a “safe to spend” amount, which accounts for upcoming bills — as long as users have taken the initiative to punch in that data.

Moven, on the other hand, considers itself the anti-budget. You use Moven’s debit card like you would any other, and Moven’s technology analyzes your spending data. Moven’s spending meter (similar to Simple Bank’s safe-to-spend) assigns users a green, yellow, or red rating based on their how much you’ve spent in a given category as compared with other months to nudge you to make better financial decisions. The mobile app also uses a sort of shock tactic to get you saving money. After a purchase, you receive an “instant receipt” on your phone that tells them how much you’ve spent in total for the month or the week on a certain item.

“I found out I was spending over $400 a month on taxis. That was the aha moment for me,” said King. Since then, he’s started using Citibike, taking the subway, and using alternative methods of transport to cut down on his car habit. Enabling these push notifications on smartwatches is the next step to making Moven’s technology more pervasive and potentially more effective. Imagine how your spending would change, if every day after you’ve purchased that expensive sandwich from the deli next to your office, your smartwatch pinged you with your monthly food expenditure bill. You just might start brown-bagging your lunch.

In terms of wearable budgeting devices, only financial expert Nicole Lapin has released anything like Moven’s wearable app. In February Lapin rolled out the Cash smartwatch, which lets you track your spending throughout the day by punching purchase data into the smartwatch as it happens. You can then use the desktop application or mobile app to track spending and update your budget. However, Cash has requires a highly motivated user; someone who won’t get fatigued by entering every purchase into Cash’s tiny interface.

Moven automates tracked spending, but it’s only intended for discretionary funds (Moven’s founders expect you to have multiple bank accounts — one for savings, one for monthly bills, and one for leisure spending). In a way, Moven’s technology is more like an updated bank account passbook (those slim staple bound notebooks that used to accompany bank accounts and log transactions) than a way of budgeting. It’s a tool that keeps you aware of your spending.

“If you want to get someone to save money, all you really have to get them to do is stop spending money. Instead of trying to build discipline, which is the hardest part of changing spending habits, we find the behavioral approach is much more powerful,” said King.

Budgeting is inherently difficult, because it requires you to anticipate expenditures, spend thoughtfully, and keep track of everything you spend. Moven operates under the premise that you don’t have to be thoughtful about spending as long as your bank can offer you meaningful data about where your problem areas are. If you are frequently reminded of your bad habits, you may curb their spending, as King did. But spending less is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of good money management.

Moven may be able to scare people into being more frugal, but planning big purchases, dealing with unexpected expenses, and accruing meaningful savings really requires engagement — not automation. And ultimately those smartwatch push notifications may become more annoying than helpful.

Still, Moven has higher aspirations than just getting you to spend less. The company is looking into ways to incorporate NFC technology, so you can debit money directly from your phone or wearable — much like Apple, Google, and PayPal are already doing. The company is also interested in working on a way to facilitate instant debit to debit transactions.

In the meantime, Moven has its eye on the Apple Watch and will be working to bring its technology to more wearables in 2015.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/02/moven-brings-its-banking-app-to-samsungs-moto360-and-gear-smartwatches/feed/01634498Moven brings its banking app to Motorola’s Moto 360 and Samsung’s Gear smartwatchesRipple's payment protocol comes to the U.S.http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/24/ripples-payment-protocol-comes-to-the-u-s/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/24/ripples-payment-protocol-comes-to-the-u-s/#respondWed, 24 Sep 2014 12:22:50 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1560267Payment network Ripple Labs just snagged its second and third bank partnerships in a quest to create frictionless global payments. CBW Bank, out of Kansas, and Cross River Bank in New Jersey, both say they will use Ripple to make global money transfers and payments. Ripple announced its first bank partnership, with Fidor Bank in Germany, back in […]
]]>

Payment network Ripple Labs just snagged its second and third bank partnerships in a quest to create frictionless global payments.

CBW Bank, out of Kansas, and Cross River Bank in New Jersey, both say they will use Ripple to make global money transfers and payments. Ripple announced its first bank partnership, with Fidor Bank in Germany, back in May.

What’s significant about the adoption of Ripple’s payment protocol is that it allows for same day transfers with better exchange rates than you’d traditionally get. Traditionally, when a person makes an international money transfer from a small bank, that small bank doesn’t have deposits all over the world, so it relies on bigger banks for assistance.

“That bank is going to charge the small bank fees for that. It’s also going to determine the exchange rate for dollar to euro. They’ll say this is the dollar to euro rate and they’ll charge 5% on a dollar-euro exchange rate,” said Ripple CEO Chris Larsen. Plus, once that small bank sends the money to the big bank overseas, it may not know where the money is while it’s in transit, and transfers often take a few days.

“Meanwhile a Wall Street trader might be offering 1/10 that spread,” says Larsen. Ripple’s protocol allows anybody to bid on a currency exchange as long as the initiating bank approves. So when an exchange is entered into the network, Ripple automatically matches it to the best exchange rate for the person making the transfer.

Ripple is able to offer this speedy exchange using a digital asset called XRP — very similar to Bitcoin’s BTC. The difference, Larsen told VentureBeat, is that with Bitcoin a user can’t put another currency, like dollars or euros, into the protocol. Think of XRP as the ferry moving money from the bank to the trader and then to its final destination.

Right now XRP is only valued at half a penny, but Larsen says that as this protocol gains use, it’s value will rise, and since Ripple has a high stake in XRP, it stands to win in the long run if the protocol takes off.

Last month, Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb agreed not to sell off his 9 billion XRP after leaving the company to start a new project. According to the agreement, he cannot sell more than 10,000 XRP a week for the first year in order to prevent any major disruptions to the currency’s value.

In the meantime, the company will be looking to integrate with small banks in China, Japan, and around the world, as well as to bring more traders to its network.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/24/ripples-payment-protocol-comes-to-the-u-s/feed/01560267Ripple's payment protocol comes to the U.S.Tech's night at the opera: can young money rescue this age-old art form?http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/07/techs-night-at-the-opera-can-young-money-rescue-this-age-old-art-form/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/07/techs-night-at-the-opera-can-young-money-rescue-this-age-old-art-form/#respondSat, 07 Sep 2013 18:25:29 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=807803With the new money and youthful vigor of the tech community, the opera company of today is too big and too bold to fail.
]]>

“My god, it’s so beautiful.”

These are the words my young, tech-employed, new-to-opera colleague whispered moments after the curtain came up at San Francisco’s opening night. And she was absolutely correct: Going to an opera is one of the most enthralling, transporting experiences a person can have.

It’s too bad not enough of our peers know this yet. She and I were two of a handful of attendees under the age of 40. We were also part of handful of technologists at the event.

Unfortunately, while the overlap in those groups is San Francisco Opera’s sweet spot of youth and money, that overlap is very small and difficult to court. But court them the Opera must. To ignore them is an almost certain death sentence. Older patrons, the sustaining members of this institution, are fading into the afterlife, and there are precious few willing and able to take their place.

It’s not the expense or the dressing-up that bothers this new crowd; most of these young folks have money to spare and too few occasions for formalwear. It’s that they haven’t yet acquired the palate for this art form. Two Facebookers complained to us about the difficulties of listening to music in a foreign language and the tedium of watching a three-hour production.

Dale Larson, a startup coach we ran into at opening night, told us that he’d tried to get a group of startup CEOs to come to a production in the past.

“They were very polite, but … It’s a shame. They would realize it’s fabulous fun, but they just haven’t had the exposure.”

An acquired taste

In fact, the great majority of the opera-going tech professionals we spoke to for this article told us they’d had a long and gradual introduction to opera from childhood or adolescence.

PR pro Heather Meeker studied opera in her youth. Her fiancé, Oracle business development and marketing director Patrick Haas, told us his mother, a singer, would “always have opera on in the background” during evenings at home.

Social media manager Amy Higgins is also a board member for the Opera’s Bravo Club for young professionals. She said her mother first took her to the opera while she was still in the womb.

“I think I truly fell in love when I was nine years old,” she continued. “My music teacher played a section from Carmen. Then during my freshman year of high school, we went to see my first live (out of the womb) opera, Tosca.”

Another tech PR professional, Aaron Endré, told us that films featuring opera snippets got him intrigued. His partner, Ryan Hazelton, found his way to the opera via musicals. A production of La bohème (the basis for hit musical Rent) was accessible enough to hook him.

So to get more young people into the opera, it appears you also have to figure out how to “hook” those who’ve had no previous exposure to the art form, who come to it with harmful misconceptions and lots of trepidation about their ability and desire to relate to it.

With free events (SF Opera stages free concerts three times a year and shorter programs and recitals, the city’s cultural institutions try each year to do exactly that.

But why are they trying to hard to get this demographic involved? The simplest answer: Their survival depends on it.

Young money

There’s more to being rich than eating $4 toast. Or wearing $300 jeans and $200 “technical” hoodies. At some point, you have to go buy yourself some culture.

Young technologists are our city’s “new money.” In sharp contrast to San Francisco “old money,” they come from around the country and even around the globe, usually from working- or middle-class backgrounds. They’re not the museum benefactors or the tony men’s club members; they usually have no special connection to the community outside their own small social and work spheres. Some went to Ivy League schools, but most don’t have backgrounds in the performing arts or many experiences as patrons of the arts.

But a handful of local cultural institutions are trying to change that. By hook or by crook, by gimmick or discount, San Francisco opera is courting the hoodie crowd, along with its new money and its investment in the city’s future.

After all, the “old money” crowd is only going to be around for so long. In tandem with its campaigns for estate-planning donations, the San Francisco Opera is also angling for the financial up-and-comers. The opera needs to get them addicted to this fascinating but complex art form while they’re in their twenties and thirties in order to form them into patrons for life — and sustaining members of one of the oldest, grandest traditions in the performing arts.

The SF Opera has begun specifically reaching out to Silicon Valley’s finest, thanks to staffers like Jennifer Lynch, the Opera’s development director.

“In the past, we had support from the local venture community; big leaders like Pitch Johnson [founder of venture firm Draper and Johnson]. For years, they have been trying to encourage us to more actively reach out to the tech superstars coming up behind them,” said Lynch in a recent interview.

The previously mentioned Bravo Club offers outrageous discounts to people under the age of 40. Some of these people are “pre-money,” if you will, so getting Dress Circle seats for $35 and Orchestra seats for $50 puts a relatively inaccessible experience in their reach. The local symphony has a similar program, Symphonix.

In addition to cultivating a familiarity with and even love for live, classical music, these programs also get younger potential money-makers used to the idea of philanthropy for the arts.

A fresh face

For many young folks, even the word “opera” conjures visions of large women in horned helmets or 18th-century gowns screeching in foreign tongues about romantic love. But the opera of today has abandoned that stereotype for many newer productions specifically to attract a new audience.

Appealing to the young, tech-savvy crowd means a few things. First, this demographic is highly design-oriented with a passion for details like elegant animations and usable experiences. For the opera, this means offering subtitles (at SF Opera, these are “supertitles” projected on a long screen above the stage). It also means working with modern-style animators and designers to deliver creatively digital sets with a slew of projectors, pyrotechnics, and special effects.

Going back to the horned helmets preconception, the opera is also under pressure to premiere new and modern music with fresh stories. This past season’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene offered an iconoclastic view on the Christian religion — a theme sure to woo the skeptical tech and science group. This season, we have Dolores Claiborne, a production based on a Stephen King novel.

The 2011 premiere was a 9/11 story called Heart of a Soldier; while it was criticized as sounding like a musical, it was one of the most sonically accessible scores in modern opera with stunning visual effects.

Third and finally, the older operas are getting seriously revamped with edgy, youthful sets and costumes. The 2011 Ring cycle, Richard Wagner’s multi-day musical binge-fest, was completely reimagined in a steampunk, post-apocalyptic production that practically screamed “Burning Man!”

Last year’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute brought the colorful designs and playful aesthetic of Japanese ceramic artist Jun Kaneko.

And it’s not just happening in San Francisco. Meeker told us, “I saw Rigoletto at the SF Opera last year. Then I just watched the Vegas-style interpretation from [the New York Metropolitan Opera] on PBS. I preferred the Met version.”

This is a wider trend in the opera world, one that has helped opera adapt itself to every age and location.

The opera’s future

Outsiders might assume that opera was faltering or even doomed. But this institution and art form has been around since the 1500s, before lush, classical music was even a ringing in composers’ ears. It’s had to transition throughout the centuries, weathering cultural and political revolutions as well as upheavals in taste and style.

More than technology, more than science, opera has stood the test of time. Theories have been proven false and entire paradigms been thrown out, yet we still watch with delight and awe as performers live out the works of Haydn and Mozart.

“Opera is a musical oration that depicts a story from a period of time — a passionate tale that appeals to our heart and emotions — and that has remained unchanged over the years,” Meeker noted.

“Performance art as a whole is very important,” said Higgins. “We can all learn from the complex harmony an opera produces. Think of what it takes to make a new business run: everything working in harmony.”

It’s true that opera is facing big changes. But think of it as a pivot from a company that’s executed innumerable successful pivots throughout its history. More than any organization you can imagine (excepting the Catholic Church, perhaps), the opera company of today is too big and too bold to fail.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/07/techs-night-at-the-opera-can-young-money-rescue-this-age-old-art-form/feed/0807803Tech's night at the opera: can young money rescue this age-old art form?Bitcoin bonus in Ponzi-scheme case: Judge rules it’s a legit currencyhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/08/07/bitcoin-is-money/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/07/bitcoin-is-money/#respondWed, 07 Aug 2013 17:38:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=790746Bitcoin got love from a judge this week who said a Ponzi scheme case involving the currency should go forward because Bitcoin is, in fact, real money.
]]>

Bitcoin gained a little more legitimacy this week. A judge ruled Bitcoin should be considered actual “money” and that a case involving a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme should be taken seriously.

Bitcoin has been criticized by many who believe the currency is unstable following a number of outages and that it aids people in seedy behaviors such as tax evasion. But there are many ways Bitcoin has been adopted into “real life,” which U.S. District Court Judge Amos L. Mazzant called out in his ruling against Trendon T. Shavers.

Shavers was charged last month with running a Ponzi scheme and argued that the case should be dismissed because Bitcoin shouldn’t be considered a real currency. He promised a 7 percent weekly interest rate, but he used incoming money to pay out profits to older investors (making it a classic Ponzi scheme). Shavers collected up to 700,000 Bitcoin, according to the SEC, over the course of the scheme. Today, that would be worth over $60 million.

Mazzant wrote in his opinion:

“First, the Court must determine whether the BTCST investments constitute an investment of money. It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money. It can be used to puchase goods or services, and as Shavers stated, used to pay for individual living expenses. The only limitation of Bitcoin is that it is limited to those places that accept it as currency. However, it can also be exchanged for conventional currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen, and Yuan. Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money.”

Some naysayers might agree with Shavers, however. The California Department of Financial Institutions sent The Bitcoin Foundation a cease-and-desist letter in June, saying Bitcoin did not have the proper license to engage in the business of money transmission.

Despite this, however, we have yet to see a real spike in Bitcoin trading.

Few startups have been as laser-focused on making sense of your finances as New York City-based LearnVest Planning. In addition to the usual online tools for tracking your expenses and planning your savings, LearnVest’s certified financial planners also provide one-on-one help — something previously reserved for the wealthy.

Today, the company is launching yet another major upgrade to its platform, the LearnVest Planning Action Program, a seven-step process that gets new customers up and running on the site faster than ever.

LearnVest Planning has also raised an additional $16.5 million in a strategic round of funding, which will be used to spur development of the new Action Program, as well as scale the service’s overall operations. Existing investor Accel Partners participated in the round and was joined by new investors American Express Ventures, Claritas Capital, and others. The company has now raised more than $40 million in total.

Alexa Von Tobel, LearnVest’s founder and chief executive, tells me the company wasn’t seeking additional funding — but as with any fast-growing startup, it was clear that the fresh investment would be a major help. LearnVest now has 80 full-time employees and around 20 consultants, and it recently opened a new office in Phoenix, Arizona.

“We know that what we’re doing is working with clients — now we’re just perfecting with precision,” Von Tobel said in an interview. “Everything is focused on streamlining and really delighting with the customer experience.”

It makes sense for LearnVest to pay particular attention to how new users come aboard its service. Financial planning can be a headache, and it’s easy to simply give up when confronted with a slew of tasks. The LearnVest Planning Action Program breaks down the process by focusing on seven key tasks — including getting yourself organized, protecting yourself by saving, and maximizing the potential of your portfolio.

LearnVest’s pricing is a combination of a down payment — $89 for the starter membership, with higher level plans at $299 and $399 — and a $19 monthly fee. The company is also bringing its service to businesses with “Workplace Solutions,” a way for employees to take advantage of LearnVest’s tools and experts.

LearnVest’s team of Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) remains one of the biggest ways the company differentiates itself from competitors. Sites like Mint give you the tools to figure out your finances, but having help from an actual financial professional is another matter entirely. You’re always dealing with the same CFP, and unlike other financial advisors, they don’t push you towards any services that you may not need.

Apple has applied for a patent on a combined virtual currency and digital wallet technology that would allow you to store money in the cloud, make payments with your iPhone, and — just maybe — communicate with point-of-sale terminals via NFC.

Not to mention making money by viewing ads.

The patent application, published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Organization, details how iPhone users could walk into a store, pay for goods with their phone, and walk out with their merchandise. All of this is possible today, of course, but Apple’s patent application mentions — although does not require — NFC, something that Apple has long resisted adding to the iPhone. NFC facilitates digital wallets and cashless purchasing by wirelessly transmitting payment credentials and pricing information.

Interestingly or oddly, as it strikes you, the patent application includes considerable discussion of “free” services or products that users of the system could access. For example, watching ads could result in getting “tokens” that are redeemable for offsetting your mobile carrier costs, or even providing them completely for free. Or, like a high-tech virtual coupon, sponsors could assign tokens for any other specific purpose or use they wish, and users could only redeem them for that particular service or product.

We’ll be discussing the future of mobile money in the “Mobile money: More money, more problems” track of our MobileBeat conference, July 9-10.

Credits could be transferred, the patent says, via text message or over the web, and then either used virtually for virtual services, or transmitted to a retail store’s point-of-sale system for actual, physical goods or services.

Apple is late to the virtual wallet game, a market that is led by long-time payments innovator PayPal, but one that relative newcomers MasterCard, Visa, and Google desperately want to own. Google in particular has been moving quickly in the virtual wallet space, albeit with some sideways maneuvering that appears to turn your virtual wallet into a morphing credit card. But its Android platform, which has more phones that support NFC, has been seen as a bit of a leg up on Apple.

Apple, of course, has Passbook, the somewhat-amorphous ticketing, membership card, and boarding pass wallet that almost might sort of kind of be a predecessor to a full-on digital wallet. But it has never really seemed to know exactly what it was for, and has never really seemed to get the kind of third-party acceptance it needs. And iPhone users don’t seem to have been using it.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/06/apple-files-imoney-patent-for-virtual-currency-digital-wallet-and-free-stuff/feed/2752264Apple files ‘iMoney’ patent for virtual currency, digital wallet, and … free stuffHere are the 3 major places health tech innovators can make moneyhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/05/20/health-tech-money/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/20/health-tech-money/#respondMon, 20 May 2013 17:07:38 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=740689For Farzad Mostashari, the United States' national coordinator for health information technology, there are three major areas that need a tech touch -- and also provide an opportunity for making major money.
]]>

The United States’ national coordinator for health information technology, Farzad Mostashari, believes health tech innovation is only going to grow when there are economic incentives.

“Ultimately it’s going to be the market that drives innovation and not the government,” said Mostashari, speaking via Skype at VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference in San Francisco, Calif. “There’s a lot of money to be made making healthcare less expensive.”

Bringing costs down

Mostashari believes that making health care cheaper is the biggest opportunity in the market today. The cloud has a big role to play here in terms of using technology to provide preventative care. For example, he said, Iora Health is doing just that by providing healthcare to specific groups of people so that healthcare is targeted. But it is also using the cloud to give wellness information to its patients, also targeted to their needs, in an attempt to keep patients healthier longer, saving them money.

Digitization of data

The next opportunity is the digitization of data. This, of course, encompasses electronic health records, as well as other ways of digesting information about your own, or your patients’ health. Electronic health records are there to help with that. Currently, the Obama Administration has increased EHR adoption to 44 percent. That’s more than the 20 years of adoption prior to the administration taking over.

But hospitals, doctors, and nurses are frustrated with these records. They aren’t organized, the hardware in the hospital itself is often outdated and now, instead of light clipboard with straight information, nurses are having to tote around laptops and rolling stations to their patient’s rooms. Entrepreneurs who find a better way of displaying and storing this patient data will have a wide range of customers.

Democratization of data

The last opportunity is the democratization of that data. VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall, interviewing Mostashari, shared a story about his time in the hospital with mysterious stomach bleeding. He found himself in the ER twice over the course of a few years, having pints of blood removed from his abdomen, but despite the obvious medical issues, he simply couldn’t find data on his condition. The information wasn’t there.

This is where Mostashari says that customers will need to get involved in their own health care, as well as providers. The customer drives demand. If they become more vocal about wanting access to their electronic health records as well as connections to third party applications that can make sense of that data. Providers who see places where the tech community can fill in gaps need to start making noise as well.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/20/health-tech-money/feed/0740689Here are the 3 major places health tech innovators can make moneyA lesson from Nikola Tesla: Entrepreneurship isn’t about the moneyhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/05/10/a-lesson-from-nikola-tesla-entrepreneurship-isnt-about-the-money/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/10/a-lesson-from-nikola-tesla-entrepreneurship-isnt-about-the-money/#respondFri, 10 May 2013 21:08:56 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=734197GUEST: Tesla made it clear that being a great entrepreneur -- one who commercialized a critical standard that powers innovation 125 years later -- isn't necessarily about the money.
]]>GUEST:

On January 1, 1999, I immigrated to Silicon Valley from Canada to work as a corporate attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. I watched in amazement as 400 companies went public that year (about a quarter of them through my law firm), and in March 2000 I felt compelled to leave the firm and start a company called HigherMarkets. It was around the same day that the Nasdaq peaked at 5132.52.

The experience and timing of my departure — and the name of my first company — sadly signified a tight connection for me between money and entrepreneurship.

Money has a nasty habit of invading the definition of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, where we tend to measure success by funding rounds, valuations, and liquidity events. I often run with a definition of an entrepreneur defined by money: People who don’t know your financial situation think you’re rich, and people who do think you’re crazy. An entrepreneur can be a person spending $10,000 to open a shop or $100 million to build a new kind of car.

Long before the car company, there was an inventor named Nikola Tesla who navigated choices of money and entrepreneurship as we all do in the Silicon Valley. Tesla immigrated to the east coast of the United States in 1884, initially to work alongside Thomas Edison. That relationship didn’t last, but Tesla is credited with the inventions that fueled the rise of electric company Westinghouse and made alternating current the standard of electricity we rely on today.

Larry Page of Google, who mentioned Nikola Tesla on a recent earnings call and describes him as one of the greatest inventors ever, has said you might want to be more like Edison than Tesla. In fact that comparison may only be true in textbooks.

A closer study of the events of the 1890s, for example, reveals that Edison faced similar entrepreneurial challenges to Tesla: Edison was kicked aside from General Electric, the successor company to his own, leading him to swear off the same financial backers for the next 30 years. Tesla, on the other hand, generously allowed Westinghouse to renegotiate a patent deal that enabled the financially strapped company to establish the electricity standard we rely on today.

Tesla made it clear that being a great entrepreneur — one who commercialized a critical standard that powers innovation 125 years later — isn’t necessarily about the money.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t live without two famous early inventions of Edison’s — photography and film — Tesla’s contributions are the ones that can spark Silicon Valley’s imagination on an even bigger scale now. Tesla made a commitment to the study of wireless energy and wireless information transmission beginning in the 1880s that led him to explore communication with other planets, to evaluate ways to transmit energy wirelessly around earth, and to care about taking advantage of the sun’s radiation and earth’s vibrations to prevent the squandering of natural resources that was occurring rapidly around him.

Sound useful today?

I love Instagram as much as anyone, but my nine-year-old daughter points out that less time on my iPhone can equal more time on things that really matter. Tesla focused on discovery in areas that really mattered, and he faced a great deal of ridicule — and no doubt financial impact — for it.

As the need to invite more immigrants to the Silicon Valley only increases, we need to send the message more than ever that our love for creative invention and a focus on the biggest challenges are more valued than money. There are some outstanding financial backers in the Silicon Valley, but the majority of venture capitalists face their own short-term problems that don’t always allow them to live up to the long-term horizons mentioned on their websites.

Whether you’ve just helped fund a startup or raised money for one, or whether you’re running a big company or working at one, we all need to be looking for ways to hail the inventors around us regardless of financial outcome. We don’t necessarily need to shift our models of capital allocation or stock grants to do it, but we do need to change where we spend our time celebrating. I’ve heard a lot of lip service paid to words like innovation and creativity in the Silicon Valley. It’s up to each of us to defend those words in a way that means something more than the next acquisition.

The free exchange of information and affordable access to sustainable energy — both issues worked on by Nikola Tesla in his time — have the potential to solve critical issues of poverty and education, and inspire peace, around the world. Wireless information transmission and energy remain two of the Silicon Valley’s biggest opportunities.

Hail to the inventors who are working on those challenges today without regard to financial outcomes. Hail to Nikola Tesla.

Dorrian Porter organized Northern Imagination in 2013, a company that seeks to positively impact the wellbeing and happiness of people via creative projects, ideas, and inventions. He just launched a Kickstarter campaign to build a statue of Nikola Tesla in the Silicon Valley to fuel creativity on the big issues of energy and wireless. You can watch a short video and participate in the campaign here: http://kck.st/ZWLzgG.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/10/a-lesson-from-nikola-tesla-entrepreneurship-isnt-about-the-money/feed/0734197A lesson from Nikola Tesla: Entrepreneurship isn’t about the moneyReport: VCs were cautious in 2012 but plan to be ‘highly active’ in 2013http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/report-vcs-were-cautious-in-2012-but-plan-to-be-highly-active-in-2013/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/report-vcs-were-cautious-in-2012-but-plan-to-be-highly-active-in-2013/#respondFri, 18 Jan 2013 16:35:01 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=606723With entrepreneur-friendly government regulation and high-quality late stage companies on the cusp of going public, VCs expect to see solid returns in the coming year.
]]>

Results from a MoneyTree report in partnership with the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) found that investments totaled $26.5 billion in 2012, with VCs closing 3,698 deals. This is a 10 percent decrease in dollars and a 6 percent decline in deals over the prior year.

Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s venture capital and private equity arm attributed the decrease to unstable markets and “taxes, government policy, the general environment in the stock and equity markets, troubles in life sciences, [and] the regulatory market” in a call with press and analysts.

However, investors and financial analysts agree that there is cause for optimism in 2013. For the fourth quarter, venture investment of $6.4 billion into 968 companies fell 3 percent in dollars but rose 5 percent in deal volume over Q3 2012. With the re-election of President Obama and burgeoning excitement about the JOBS Act, deals kicked into high gear.

Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA, said there would be a decline in “me too” investments in 2013, meaning that VCs won’t just follow the herd. With the industry facing constriction, “more seasoned entrepreneurs” will get funding over 20-something Internet wunderkinds.

Indeed, software is the only sector to see a steady increase in venture capital dollars, while biotech and life sciences, clean-tech and consumer products and services, failed to capture VC attention in the final quarter of 2012. Investment dollars rose 10 percent over 2011 to $8.3 billion, which funded 1,266 software deals.

This represents the highest level of investment in the software sector in over a decade.

Investors on the call, including John Backus of New Atlantic Ventures, said there were a healthy number of companies receiving first-round financing. Seed deals are notoriously difficult to track as family and friends often privately invest. “I don’t believe we had a series A crunch,” said Backus, who said he witnessed an “angel feeding frenzy.”

With entrepreneur-friendly government regulation and high-quality late stage companies on the cusp of going public, VCs expect to see solid returns in the coming year. “It’s a terrific time to be investor,” said Jim Healy of Sofinnova Ventures. “We expect to be highly active in 2013.”

The quarterly Moneytree report is issued by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the NVCA, with data collected by Thomson Reuters. The full report is available online at NVCA.org.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/18/report-vcs-were-cautious-in-2012-but-plan-to-be-highly-active-in-2013/feed/0606723Report: VCs were cautious in 2012 but plan to be ‘highly active’ in 2013PayPal introduces MyCashCards for old-fashioned types still using cashhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/12/13/paypal-introduces-mycashcards-for-old-fashioned-types-still-using-cash/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/13/paypal-introduces-mycashcards-for-old-fashioned-types-still-using-cash/#commentsThu, 13 Dec 2012 21:12:33 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=589840PayPal now offers pre-paid cash cards for people who rely on cash, but want to shop online.
]]>Shopping, as we know it, is changing. During the holiday season, shopping centers are still packed with people choosing gifts for their loved ones, but now technology plays an increasingly significant role in how those choices are made. And paid for.

People purchase a My Cash Card, which are available as of today at more than 30,000 retail locations across the U.S. They then create an account on the companion PayPal site and load the funds into their PayPal account using the PIN number on the back of the card. From there, they can online shop to their hearts’ and wallet’s content.

This is a useful option for people who prefer or only have access to cash, but want to make purchases online. Those folks in cash-flow heavy professions (bartenders, strippers, and so on), people wary of large financial institutions, or those who simply do not have a credit/debit card can now join in the fun of online shopping.

PayPal joined with InComm for this initiative, a company that provides a suite of prepaid products. It is part of PayPal’s overarching mission to be the method that people pay for everything, online, offline, and the netherworld in-between. In August, PayPal announced a partnership with Discover that will bring its technology to the point-of-sale (POS) for millions of merchants. Once the integration is complete, consumers will be able to pay using their PayPal accounts in-store. Rather than pulling out a wallet, all they need to do is type in their mobile number and a PIN.

During a roundtable chat yesterday with Hill Ferguson, PayPal’s VP of global product, he said that all these consumer engagement initiatives are in an effort to create a one-stop-shop for retail payments.

“We have spent the past year and a half reinventing and reinvigorating the brand to give it a personality,” he said. “We have 117 million active users. We help offline users get online and online users get offline to make the shopping experience as secure and convenient as possible. Our vision is to be the global digital wallet.”

PayPal started out as an internet payment service way back in the 1990s and was acquired by eBay in 2002. Like any savvy company in the e-commerce/payments space, it has put a heavy emphasis on mobile transactions and has seen record mobile shopping numbers over the past few weeks. Whether physical wallets are to be relegated to the domain of pocket watches and monocles is still up in the air. PayPal, however, is hard at work to create options for all shoppers, regardless of their payment proclivities.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/13/paypal-introduces-mycashcards-for-old-fashioned-types-still-using-cash/feed/1589840PayPal introduces MyCashCards for old-fashioned types still using cashFinancial planning for all: LearnVest gets its biggest update yethttp://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/financial-planning-for-all-learnvest-gets-its-biggest-update-yet/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/financial-planning-for-all-learnvest-gets-its-biggest-update-yet/#respondTue, 11 Sep 2012 14:54:31 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=528972New York City-based LearnVest is aiming big with its latest update, which transforms the startup from a niche financial planning service to something that anyone can use.
]]>

After targeting financial planning for women for the past few years, New York City-based LearnVest is aiming big with its latest update, which transforms the startup from a niche financial planning service to something that anyone can use.

LearnVest announced today that it has upgraded its core Money Center tool and tied it together with its financial planning services, making it easier than ever for financial planners to help you manage your money. Additionally, the company is now a Registered Investment Advisor, allowing its planners to offer investment advice as well.

“I just want to make financial planning really consumable — right now it’s not a consumer product,” Aleva von Tobel, LearnVest’s founder and CEO, told VentureBeat in an interview last week. “Being able to get advice from an expert… it’s a total disorganized process…”

LearnVest previously targeted women for financial planning because it was simply easier to go after a specific segment of users. But after the launch of its initial financial planning tools last year, Von Tobel tells me, the company has attracted plenty of men as well. Now, Von Tobel believes (without getting too political) LearnVest can bring financial planning to the 99 percent.

“I kind of step back and look at the LegalZoom’s of the world … everyone needs legal documents … but can we all afford a personal lawyer? No.,” Von Tobel said. “What they did is make getting access to legal documents very easy and consumable, and now they have legal services where you ca actually pay to work with lawyers… So at the high level, there’s an expert intensive industry that users really need access to but can’t afford because barriers to entry have been too high, [we’re] disrupting it by putting in technology and making it affordable and consumable.”

LearnVest’s Money Center tool originally let you hook in your financial accounts to track your spending, but with this latest update it has become a valuable financial planning companion. Now the Money Center lets you visualize your budget and financial goals, and it also offers up tips to help you maintain your financial plan. Unlike Mint, which also helps manage your financial accounts, LearnVest doesn’t push you towards third-party services and credit cards to make an extra buck.

LearnVest is also working on an iPhone app, which should be available in the next few weeks. The app offers pretty much all of the features in LearnVest’s desktop Money Center, and in many ways it’ll be even more convenient. In particular, the company has developed a quick and simple way to enter cash transactions — it’s almost as simple as a Foursquare check-in. Keeping track of cash transactions has been my biggest problem with using money management services, so I’m hoping LearnVest has finally cracked that nut.

The company has also revamped its premium service, which is powered by a team of Certified Financial Planners. Just like LearnVest’s previous offering, you’ll have your own CFP to work with, which could be particularly helpful for those of you with complex finances.

A new “Budget Starter” plan ($89) gives you a phone consultation with a Learnvest CFP and three months of e-mail support. The “5-Year Planner” plan ($349 for annual) lets you map out a longer financial plan with a CFP and it comes with a phone consultation, three quarterly check-ins, and a year of free e-mail support.

At the high end, there’s the “Portfolio Builder” package ($599 a year), which is geared at people who are ready to invest, but want to avoid the fees of traditional financial and investment planners. It includes everything from the 5-Year Planner package, along with additional help with their investment portfolio.

As part of the upgraded Money Center, LearnVest’s CFPs can also view your accounts live during consultations. This allows the CFP to keep track of your finances without constantly having to catch up on your paperwork. (Think of it like working on a shared Google Doc.) Co-browsing your accounts may seem like a minor feature, but Von Tobel says nobody else in the financial planning is offering anything similar. Currently, the feature is restricted to when you’re on the phone with a CFP.

LearnVest has raised around $25 million from Accel Partners, Rose Tech Ventures, Richmond Management, and others.

Front photo via Tracy O/Flickr

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/financial-planning-for-all-learnvest-gets-its-biggest-update-yet/feed/0528972Financial planning for all: LearnVest gets its biggest update yetFuture of top U.S. Bitcoin exchange in doubt as $250K in virtual currency stolenhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/09/04/bitcoin-future-in-doubt-as-250k-stolen/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/04/bitcoin-future-in-doubt-as-250k-stolen/#respondWed, 05 Sep 2012 06:44:19 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=525563The future of the top U.S. Bitcoin echange is in doubt after $250,000 in virtual currency was stolen last night.
As CNet reports, an unidentified hacker found and absconded with an unencrypted backup of virtual wallet keys, taking 24,000 bitcoins, each worth just over ten U.S. dollars. It's the virtual equivalent of leaving your wallet on the cafe table as you go to use the restroom.
]]>The future of the top U.S. Bitcoin exchange is in doubt after $250,000 in virtual currency was stolen last night.

As CNet reports, an unidentified hacker found and absconded with an unencrypted backup of virtual wallet keys, taking 24,000 Bitcoins, each worth just over ten U.S. dollars. It’s the virtual equivalent of leaving your wallet on the cafe table as you go to use the restroom.

In a blog post, BitFloor founder Roman Shtylman said that BitFloor, the exchange for Bitcoins, would be paused while he evaluates options. He said he still had logs for all the accounts, trades and transfers for every user, but the theft took the vast majority of the coins BitFloor has on hand at any time, which are generated by commissions on Bitcoin trades.

Shtylman wants to continue to operate BitFloor, but that is currently in doubt. And shuttering the exchange, while a last resort, is a very real option:

As a last resort, I will be forced to fully shut BitFloor down and initiate account repayment using current available funds. I still have all of the logs for accounts, trades, transfers. I know exactly how much each user currently has in their account for both USD and BTC. No records were lost in this attack.

There are multiple Bitcoin exchanges, and BitFloor is only the fourth-largest, globally. So if BitFloor is forced to shutter operations, it does not mean the end of the line for Bitcoin as a currency. In addition, there is no centralized authority for Bitcoins — the system is inherently resistant to a single point of failure.

On the other hand, other Bitcoin exchanges have gone bankrupt, some have been hacked, and there are trojans and viruses in the wild that can steal Bitcoin digital wallets.

It’s not something that engenders trust in something as fundamental as money.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/04/bitcoin-future-in-doubt-as-250k-stolen/feed/0525563Future of top U.S. Bitcoin exchange in doubt as $250K in virtual currency stolenLearnVest unveils new free and premium tools to simplify financial planninghttp://venturebeat.com/2011/07/26/learnvest-new-products/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/26/learnvest-new-products/#respondTue, 26 Jul 2011 13:00:50 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=312856LearnVest, the financial planning site aimed at women, is launching some major new free and premium features today that will make it an even more indispensable tool for taking charge of your finances. The company will now offer free access to the LearnVest My Money Center, which lets you link all of your financial accounts […]
]]>LearnVest, the financial planning site aimed at women, is launching some major new free and premium features today that will make it an even more indispensable tool for taking charge of your finances.

The company will now offer free access to the LearnVest My Money Center, which lets you link all of your financial accounts and track your spending with an email-like folder system, as well as the Take Control Bootcamp, a 10-day action-oriented email program designed to help you get a handle on your finances.

LearnVest is also launching new premium memberships as 1-day ($4.99), 3-month ($39.99), and 1-year ($129.99) offerings. The plans will give members of the site access to LearnVest’s Advice Center, as well as unlimited access to the company’s team of financial planners. Members can ask specific questions to the planners through the “Ask an Expert” feature. Through the Advice Center, members can also view LearnVest Courses, which offer on-demand lessons that reflect topics traditional financial planners normally bring up.

“Financial planning should not be a luxury,” Alexa von Tobel, LearnVest founder and CEO said in a press release this morning. “LearnVest is here to make financial planning more accessible to millions of Americans and these new personalized financial tools will help us achieve that.”

Von Tobel told me that the site is specifically targeting women because it’s much more useful to target a specific group instead of casting a wide net like competing services such as Mint. Von Tobel said that most women she’s talked to have trouble figuring out where to begin with their financial planning — LearnVest simplifies that process by offering specific plans for women from all walks of life, from recent grads to career women. But even though the site targets women, there’s nothing stopping men from taking advantage of its tools.

LearnVest has helped over 1 million women since it launched in December 2009 and has had over 110,000 users go through its Boot Camp since last year von Tobel said. The company expects to serve over 400,000 users a day by the end of the year.

The company performed an exhaustive survey of over 5,000 women on their financial attitudes and also went even deeper into a group of 1,300 to fully understand their financial needs and habits. Doing so gave the company the insight to offer tips and lessons that most women would actually use.

Based in New York City, LearnVest recently scored a hefty second round of $19 million led by Accel Capital. The company also landed $4.5 million last year, which paired Von Tobel up with one of the few female VCs around, Accel partner Theresia Gouw Ranzetta.

If you’d like to try out LearnVest’s premium service free for a day, you can use the code venturebeat2011 when you sign up.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/26/learnvest-new-products/feed/0312856LearnVest unveils new free and premium tools to simplify financial planningThief steals $500K worth of Bitcoinhttp://venturebeat.com/2011/06/15/thief-steals-bitcoins/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/15/thief-steals-bitcoins/#respondWed, 15 Jun 2011 14:59:34 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=299159A compromised Windows computer is to blame for the theft of 25,000 Bitcoins, which is the equivalent of just under half a million American dollars at current market value, according to a posting on a popular Bitcoin forum Monday. Advocates of Bitcoin, the open-source digital currency that’s easy to anatomize and difficult to duplicate, were […]
]]>A compromised Windows computer is to blame for the theft of 25,000 Bitcoins, which is the equivalent of just under half a million American dollars at current market value, according to a posting on a popular Bitcoin forum Monday.

Advocates of Bitcoin, the open-source digital currency that’s easy to anatomize and difficult to duplicate, were quick to point out that Bitcoin — just like paper money — is only as secure as the place you store it.

The digital currency is stored in an unencrypted wallet file, but Bitcoin users can take measures to improve the security of their investment.

“If there was a means to invalidate the thieves’ coins or to reclaim them, then the same could be done to a legitimate user. Bitcoin is a secure system only so long as you keep your wallet secured — and sadly it seems you were not able to adequately do so,” one forum post pointed out, adding that “this isn’t a reason to abandon bitcoin completely or to dismiss it as flawed, but of course it’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to reinvest after having lost so much.”

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/15/thief-steals-bitcoins/feed/0299159Thief steals $500K worth of BitcoinBillGuard alerts users about questionable credit card chargeshttp://venturebeat.com/2011/05/24/billguard-crowdsources-questionable-credit-card-transactions/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/24/billguard-crowdsources-questionable-credit-card-transactions/#commentsTue, 24 May 2011 12:37:16 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=260907New startup BillGuard is betting there’s a market for people who would like an extra set of eyes monitoring their credit card statements for scams, billing errors, unauthorized charges and anything else that seems odd. The company, which made its public debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City Monday, touts its services […]
]]>New startup BillGuard is betting there’s a market for people who would like an extra set of eyes monitoring their credit card statements for scams, billing errors, unauthorized charges and anything else that seems odd.

The company, which made its public debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City Monday, touts its services as “antivirus for our bills” because it scans each credit card transaction and sends out alerts for all questionable charges.

BillGuard identifies those questionable transactions using the same automated tests credit card companies use to determine fraud, scouring the web for trends and crowdsourcing transactions flagged by other BillGuard users.

Many banks offer online services that show you detailed information on each transaction made, but that information isn’t always easy to parse. BillGuard’s interface helps make sense of transaction data points and groups them to show what’s safe and what’s questionable (as shown in the image below). It also gives its users statistics and a detailed description of the merchant for each transaction.

While some people might be scared off at the idea of allowing a third-party in to manage their financial security, BillGuard seems pretty low risk. The site doesn’t store credit card data on its servers and has read-only access to credit statements. So, users can’t actually make changes to their credit accounts from BillGuard. They can only view and manage activity that’s been made.

The startup has $3 million in funding and has entered into partnerships discussions with some major banks and identity theft companies, according to TechCrunch.

Check out the video embedded below for the company’s official demo.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/24/billguard-crowdsources-questionable-credit-card-transactions/feed/8260907BillGuard alerts users about questionable credit card chargesGifi lets you hide money for your friends to encourage Foursquare check-inshttp://venturebeat.com/2010/09/27/gifi-hidden-booty-foursquare-techcrunch/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/27/gifi-hidden-booty-foursquare-techcrunch/#respondMon, 27 Sep 2010 23:18:53 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=216298Payment service Venmo announced today that it has launched Gifi, its newest iPhone app that allows users to leave money at various Foursquare check-in locations for their friends to find. The app is available in the Apple app store now. The company made the announcement at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco. Users can link their bank […]
]]>Payment service Venmo announced today that it has launched Gifi, its newest iPhone app that allows users to leave money at various Foursquare check-in locations for their friends to find. The app is available in the Apple app store now.

The company made the announcement at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco.

Users can link their bank accounts or credit cards to Gifi to leave money at any Foursquare check-in location, with the option of writing a clue for their friends to help find the hidden booty. Users can also write a message to the finder after they discover the cash.

Those on the receiving end of the money do not need Gifi. They only need to check in at Foursquare — though the company didn’t make clear how those users would receive the money outside of the Gifi app.

While real money is the only transaction medium available today, Gifi co-creator Andrew Kortina said the app would probably expand into other forms of currency like Facebook Credits. The service is also only configured for Foursquare but will eventually expand to other location-based apps like Facebook Places, he said.

The new app seems like a way to expand the use of location-based services by “game-ifying” them, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, Kortina said. Gifi users can hide the money without any kind of clue or note, taking the “game” element out of Gifi and leaving it as just another way to surprise and connect friends, he said.

Gifi comes out of Philadelphia, Penn.-based Venmo, which gives users the ability to send money to their friends through a text message and broadcast it to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Development of Gifi began in January, and Venmo has raised $1.2 for the app.